I wish this session could have been 3 hours instead of 1! The overarching theme was discussing how artificial intelligence can intersect art, how we respond to that in a human way (the tensions, fears, etc.), and how we distinguish and define who gets credit for the creations. The session was organized like this;

Each person introduced themselves and their work

then discussed how AI is currently intersecting with art, the law, neuroscience, and where it is likely to go in the future

spoiler alert : it's not going anywhere, it's only going forward, so we should think about and learn from

Jessica Fjeld was the moderator for the panel and introduced some questions and context as well as the model for how AI generated artwork functions. As of today, there are programs that have the capability to produce art that is indistinguishable from art made by humans without the aid of technology.

Some contextual references presented to frame this discussion:One argument is that generative art has been produced for centuries. An example is the Mozart Dice Game which was published in 1792 and would use the roll of two dice to randomly select small sections of music to compose an entire piece. While the claim that Mozart was first to do this seems to be unprovable, the name stuck. You can download an app on your phone called Mozart Dice Game (it costs $1.99) and see the algorithm play out before your years. This raises a few questions:

Who is the author of the music created with the app on your phone?

It couldn't be your phone, that's just the tool

is the author the programmer who developer the app?

Is it the user of the phone (ie, you)?

Is it Mozart (or another composer) from the 1700s who first defined the process of using dice to create music?

The point being, the computer or machine operates at the behest of many humans.

Sarah Newman is currently an artist and researcher at MetaLAB at Harvard and has a background in philosophy and fine art. She explores difficult philosophical concepts through her work and installations. One of her installations was at SXSW and I went to it after the session. It's called The Future of Secrets, here's how it works:

you type your secret on a computer in the room (hidden characters, so your secret remains anonymous)

once you enter your secret, a tiny paper prints out of a machine someone else's secret

there is a projection of the secrets on the wall

there are headphones in the room that are playing the secrets in automated voices, both typically masculine and feminine

A little bit more about the installation:

It was inspired by the relationship of humans and machines

she noticed an uncanny phenomenon; people connect with someone else's secrets and apply meaning and a narrative to them. Some people even become convinced that the someone-elses secret that prints out is meant for them. Like the machine is a psychic or like the installation somehow connects with someones mobile device upon entry and then learns things about them and then produces some meaningful secret that wasn't their own, but that they can relate to. The people believe the machine knows more than it does.

Some things I asked Sarah after the panel ended:

Did she have any expectations for how people with interact and react to the installation. Her answer: not really, but she did expect that people would be more hesitant or uncomfortable about sharing as secret, however, in hind sight, she realized that the people entering the room were volunteering, so that made sense. She didn't expect people to connect a meaningful narrative to their secret

Charles Marcus – Co-Founder, Vidlet (moderator)Charlie Burgoyne – Founder/CEO, Valkyrie Intelligence (was an astro physicist first, and then left and went to work at Frog)Mahin Samadani - Partner, McKinsey and Company (started on Newton team at Apple - one of biggest product failures of our lifetimes)Tracy Thirion - CEO, Bamboo Worldwide

Session Description (directly from SXSW website):Google Glass and Heinz Purple Squirt Ketchup. How can these products be such market failures? We are swimming in data, yet it's a fact that over 50% of products fail every year. Why is this happening despite having so much data easily accessible to us? Of course, much of the answer is that humans are messy and unpredictable. How do we cope with unpredictability and find meaningful insight? In this session, we will explore the rise of quant analysis and the fall of qual analysis. Are we better off?

Real life blatant example of when quantitative methods/research/analysis : 2016 election. Michael Moore was gathering qualitative data in rural parts of the US and the writing seemed to be on the wall, but we latched onto what we feel like is safer data (quantitative).

Techniques and machine learning thoughts:

In one of Charles Burgoyne's jobs, the company dropped traditional terms like gender, race, etc. and instead created new architypes

building tools that allow us to build things that will push you places you can’t even fathom, we'll be designing for 45 architypes

The next 10 years in AI : we will be creating products that conform to people vs. expecting people to conform to products because products need to be designed using iterative steps and AI can be programmed to do this without a huge manual time investment

bringing a human element to data

Duolingo example : instead of being obsessed w/ average person, they built a platform that adapts to each user. Changing pedagogies and taxonomies and changing entire experience based on the individuals

The products can and will fail, but they will heal when they do

Good designers are those who both understand customers and data and can empathize with both customers and data and data scientists (or be both in one)

The designer and the scientist become a more fluid, evolved idea.

Tracy said she doesn’t think adults can learn empathy (I almost entirely disagree with this, but I could also be wrong)

example of woman cleaning house: quantitative analysis would provide things like; how many hours per week she cleans, what types of products she uses, her patterns. What would be missed is something important that was only revealed during conversation: she has deep rooted emotion tied to cleanliness and her mother, whenever she spoke about her mother, she would grab her neck.

Qualitative vs. Quantitative : qualitative is the spark, quantitative is the fuel. The qualitative research is the why, it’s the influencing and emotional impact. There’s a reluctance for clients to want to pay for the qualitative research because it’s more nuanced and uncertain, however it builds confidence through depth and understanding. It’s a harder sell to the boss. Or the bosses bosses boss. Problem in market industry: there are not a lot of good qualitative moderators available.

What’s the process of bringing qualitative research into quantitative research? It’s the blending of insight with analogies. Doing so can allow the processes to get directionally dangerous, allow space to fail, and working toward a solution. This will require a massive cultural shift to combine these methods and be ok with failing, to see it as a necessary part of the process and not as a negative.

Training people on how to sell ideas: create an emotional connection to the idea through compelling stories.

Why do products fail?

Because they lack empathy or

There’s a lack of diving more deeply into the data

Contextual research: co-creating products alongside users. Story: Maheld’s firm has a project of working with a utility company to transition from analog maps/highlighters/binders to a digital system. The designers rode along in the trucks with the drivers to gain insight in how they use their tools to perform their job. The boss was certain that the designers wouldn’t be able to tell him anything he didn’t already know, but he was able to.

The most basic machine learning is the survey.Qualitative, quantitative, qualitative, quantitative

Tension of a business decision vs. streamlining a process

The ethical layer – responsibility of the designer to help make sure the machines don’t do EVERYTHING and mess it up.

Tina Koyama: product manager @ Twitter. She’s swiss/Japanese (she pointed this out)Jill Nussbaum: design manager at Instagram in NY. Worked at R|GA, worked on Nike and has been a teacher for 9 years. She teaches a class called Design in Public Space.John S Couch: currently at Hulu, previously ebay, Magento, Wired Japan, then startup. SF – LA

Their brands are in the spotlight currently.

Particular project with strong audience reaction:

Jill talked about the Instagram rebranding project: biggest logo and UI change to date. started with research specifically focusing on the core element of the brand that people connect with (rainbow and camera lens). There will always be lovers, haters, and mime creators. The UI changes improved user experience a ton.

IG did a good job of PREPARING THE COMPANY as a whole for the rebrand. The involved everyone in the company all through the redesign process so everyone was excited and felt a proud ownership when the new UI launched. The truth for how successful the product is is always somewhere in the middle between the SUPER negative and SUPER positive feedback (outliers). Don't get stuck in overhype or in trolls.

Internally socializing.

Tina talked about Twitter's intentional redesign and had a significant shift from a social media app to a news app. This change happened about a year ago. On the tweet, there's a retweet, like, comment and significant change is real time for like and retweet counts (animation). Realtime user feedback. When things break on the internet, things break on TW also, so they have immediate feedback.

No one on the team is ever surprised by feedback on TW because they design with their users along the way and focused on the most important part of the brand

Why did IG change the design?

Instagram hadn't had significant change since launch in 2010, community had grown and products had grown, so they decided they needed a change as well, it was time for the brand to also grow. It's was scary!

Why did TW change the design?

For TW, it was more about focusing on the most important piece of their brand and focusing efforts to communicate. Tina would describe it as a focus rather than a product change.

Why did Hulu change?

Ostensibly to bring live into the product. Also, they hadn't changed fro 10 years. John saw an opportunity to bring OTT (over the top) and also an opportunity to entirely change the user experience and marketing/brand focus. They made a video of people using the mobile product. They got the new product launched in 14 months. Launched with new show Handmaids Tale. He says it’s important for the WHOLE COMPANY to be an advocate for the end user and that this core piece sometimes gets lost.

Narrative, continuous storyline is important for designers to keep sight of this so it doesn't get lost in all the KPIs, data, etc.

Focus of Tina's class she teaches is the narrative. Her students create what she calls design fiction. It's important to tell the story of the product in the near future to get buy in and excitement for everyone. Can also show a few different paths they can take – create stories and films of people using the product.

3 ways they learn at Instagram:

Foundational research (in the field, in homes, businesses, understand the challenges) or lab research

Building quick prototypes and dog fooding it in their internal test app and then run experiment in real app (maybe 1% of users)

Run experiment in real app (maybe 1% of users)

^^ go into understand phase quickly so they can understand if they're moving in the correct directly.

Twitter has a similar process to Instagram. Design is always partnered with research. – challenging to design products from end to end in a big company. Shifted entire company to a jobs-to-be-done framework, very user-centric framework. This gets everyone thinking about the user experience as a whole vs. individual products. They ask themselves:

When do people hire twitter? And, just as importantly or maybe more importantly

When do people fire twitter?

Is there anyone in the company who owns overall user experience end to end?

One example of a brand who does this well is Apple: they have continuity throughout their entire user experience from someone passively observing a billboard to someone browsing their website

At Twitter, the CEO Jack Dorsey is the visionary who aligns everyone and evangelizes all of the principles really well throughout company

At Instagram, they have a slogan that says “nothing is someone else’s problem” so the expectation is that everyone is responsible. They have a series of internal reviews and a weekly design review. Design leadership from across company, not just your product team. It's the responsibility of each design lead to know what is going on across the company. So, even though there are 40 designers at IG, the end user experience feels like there's one designer.

Companies are very design-centric, do you ever have to explain what DESIGN is?

There are a lot of different designers at Instagram who have different skillsets. Instagram is a design lead company and one of the most important questions they area always asking is who should we bring in at which point in the project.

HULU is a mix of Hollywood + technology + design which makes evident the omnipresent tension between Hollywood and silicone valley. Hollywood is established (100 years) and more static while Silicone Valley is agile. With the different players converging at HULU, the company had to define what design means for them. Hulu defined roles of UX vs. product design vs. information architecture vs. motion designers vs. communication design

Did you anticipate the reactions to the redesign when launched?

Instagram : Knew there would be a strong reaction, prepped the company as a whole and tried to be as transparent as possible (w/things like videos). When feedback came out, they listened, but gave more weight to the analytics or anecdotal and how customers were actually using the product

Twitter: anticipated reactions and they work so closely with users for the entire process of the redesign. They wanted to bring the brand to life and The big things they did were changed typography for headlines to make them more readable and be able to easily differentiate the content being shared vs. personal

Hulu got ahead of it with videos and how-to use the new products. "Disruption that doesn't serve the user is just indulgent." - John. So make sure the improvements help the customer and communicate the why and the process.

Hulu used videos as teasers ‘this is coming’

TV is a more passive medium compared to TW and IG, the mobile experience has an opportunity to bring more interaction than the living room hulu experience

Most Valuable Product (MVP): for each redesign, did you launch what you wanted?

Twitter : design systems project let them launch in a couple months (WHAT). Because they built a strong foundation so it was easier to launch from there.

Instagram : they have a design systems team (SO IMPORTANT) so they can solve problems without having to solve the entire UI for the whole product. They looked at how users in Indonesia were hacking IG as a platform for ecommerce. They were using hashtags to group like products. They hacked search by putting the word ‘pants’, for example, in as the name so their pants for sale would come up easily when someone searched pants.

Hulu: it was a year-long launch in which they interated and grew as they went.

They all spoke about the importance of getting offsite and starting initial design phase on paper.

Closing remarks, one piece of advice, mantra:

Jill, Instagram: one of IG's design principles; do the simple thing first. Design all of the things and all of the possible solutions and then figure out (through data, research, rigor) and then, from there, iterate and simplify.

Tina, Twitter: so important for us to understand the people who use the product, especially international and those not around us. Empathy. Designing for 10 people is very easy, designing a universal experience that works across countries is. Soft skills: very important to work in a large organization; how to negotiate, persuade, present well.

John, Hulu: courage. A lot of designers are introverts, so it can be hard to stand up for design. Being exposed while creating; the data as well as the craft. And then stand with a design through critiques. The greatest designs are when everyone initially thinks you're completely out of your mind, but then they start to tip and see that you're absolutely right. Mantra: be courageous about what you're doing and being ok if it fails.

Kate has a background and interest in both behavioral psychology and UX strategy. She is a former theater nerd and has been in 40 musicals, so she has strong feelings about motion in general. She explains that our brains have evolved to derive great meaning from motion and so it makes a lot of sense that we include animation in our UX strategy.

She advocates for creating animation with a purpose and with personality. In doing so, we can change behaviors and influence KPI. She uses the Fogg Behavior Model to illustrate some points:

Some guidelines for good animations

Clear connection : a clear visual that shifts cognitive focus. An example is an animation that activates when clicking 'add to cart' and a little dot floats from the product up to the cart icon to make the connection.

talked about our working memory, as humans, of somewhere between 2-7 items (the jury is still out) and so, based on that concept, visual elements should be combined. Reduce clutter to reduce mental clutter.

Concept: Perception of Speed

Optimistic UI: This concept is where the product assumes success and keeps the user moving to the next step rather than forcing the user to wait while the system catches up.

Not optimistic UI: picture an icon commonly used for waiting or loading he page (three dots, circle figure, etc)

Transition animation: this allows a pause in the experience to be a feature rather than a bug (YAY)

Concept: Create a Narrative

Stories are 22 times more memorable than facts alone

create your narratives around the user's journey, what makes sense?

Concept: Celebrate Progress

Kate used the example of the Apple watch celebrating your exercise rings

the point of this topic is not to debate financial success, we know that's a dumpster fire

Accomplice is arguing for overall sustainability and longevity as measured by employee and customer satisfaction and retainment

true biology - finances, karma, business

the system; what you put in, you get out

EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

the culture of your company impacts outcomes

company culture is significantly correlated to customer experience

culture influences innovation

What do we know about BAD culture?The women of Accomplice took to the streets of SXSW and asked the people, here are some summarized responses:

there is backstabbing

people are selfish

individuals feel isolated

you can just feel it in your gut

a reasonable conclusion (as proposed by Accomplice): this definitely affects the productDo most companies realize how important their company culture is? NO (GIVE US PING PONG TABLES PLZ - agc)

ISSUES AND SYMPTOMS

The company has a single visionary (internal, example is Steve Jobs)There can be a failure to propagate the visionSingle innovator/decision makerFrom a business perspective, it becomes very difficult to scale and innovatethis creates an inconsistent product

User Experience Symptoms after the exit of the visionary - the product degrades over time (DONGLE LYFE)

case study APPLE // clean, simple, intuitive

the whole dongle dilemma is a symbol of innovation, but at the cost of degradation of the user experience

becomes a parody of its former self

ISSUE 1 GROWTH AT ANY COST

design becomes chaotic

the internal symptoms become business implications. This is costly in-market missteps, infrastructure failures put the company somewhere between vulnerable and liable

case study YAHOO // Yahoo wanted to transition from a search engine to a media source, so they acquired a bunch of companies. As they were evolving, consumers were confused about what they were, so they lost the audience and user base.

ISSUE 3 LACK OF DIVERSITY

Internal Symptoms

lack of transparency

gender/homogeneous leadership

group think

Business Symptoms

high turn over

consumer distrust

lack of strong innovation

User Experience Symptoms

alienation of potential user types

tone-deaf feature sets

poor product

case study APPLE HEALTH KIT //Mostly men worked on the product, it didn't have any capability around the menstrual cycle which effectively alienated 50% of the users. This mess was egregious to offensive.

case study GOOGLE //In their 2015 image label feature, the product identified groups of black folks as gorillas. This is an example of how a shortcoming in a diverse group of engineers and creators leaves holes. This product was encoded with the same unconscious biases as it's creators.

Below is a summary of each session I attended on Sunday, March 11th, 2018 at SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, Texas. I'm mostly following the design track with a focus on UX. The summaries below are my personal interpretations of each presentation and it's possible that my summary may not be entirely accurate to the intentions of the speaker(s), as these summaries have been transcribed from my messy notes in my sketchbook, and I'm just a human. I've notated direct quotes as such and did my best to be explicit about my original thoughts or inquiries.

Her National Geographic premiere will be a six-part documentary. She spoke about how our news cycle, more than ever, is so quick and surface level. It's rare to get deeper dives into issues and many important issues and stories aren't being covered in the mainstream. This series sees Katie traveling the US and sitting down with people to do deeper dives into some of the most contentious topics in American culture today, such as; feminism, the working class, muslims in America, white anxiety, & technology addiction.

The next two women who took the stage were Christine Lubrano of IFC (she is senior VP of original programming and oversees such shows as Portlandia) and Camila Jimenez, who is the CEO of FMG Studio at Fusion Media Group. The host for these two superrad women was a strategic futurist named Nancy Giordano, who is the CEO/Founder of her company, Play Big.

This talk was animated and inspiring. These women spoke about the evolution of their careers and especially how they've gained confidence and become unapologetic over time in regards to holding their space as women in male-dominated environments. They spoke about these things (or, at least, these are the things I jotted down in my sketchbook):

in television, we need to create wolds that are reflective of what's around us

confidence; we're all making it up (men/women/etc)

be less risk averse

Carol Gilligan's work as a social scientist and how she defined how man and women internalize success vs. failure differently. When men succeed, the attribute the success to themselves while women give credit to external forces such as their team or luck. When men experience failure, they tend to pass the blame onto external forces or people while women tend to take responsibility for the failure.

This was my first taste of failure at SXSW. I arrived about 15 minutes early, took my place in the line, made it within 10 places from the door and was informed that the venue was full and we wouldn't be let in. I tried to listen from the street, but it was futile. Bummed to miss this one. A similar thing happened when we tried to get into the Melinda Gates keynote speech.

Key take aways : Confrontation is necessary for growth and we should seek to design back into our products space for meaningful confrontation as a way to facilitate growth.

Steve expressed his concern for how our digital products are (intentionally or unintentionally) seeking to remove friction from our lives. His problem statement is this:

"When we remove all friction, we remove opportunities for serendipity, confrontation, and personal growth."

And then proceeded to look at what each of these points mean.

GROWTH : as people and as a society, we value personal growth. We'd also love a shortcut, but what if it's not that easy? And shouldn't be? He touched on the passtime of mindlessly scrolling through a feed (IE Instagram) and asked where the opportunity for meaningful engagement is. He referenced the CDC report about teen depression and suicide links to smart phone use (referenced in this article). He also said these things about social media platforms:

they create echo chambers that highlight our differences rather than our shared values

they pull us apart rather than bring us together (AGC summary: they remove empathy in favor of oversimplifying individuals values and viewpoints, which drives us further away from shared values/common ground and/or creates a perception that we no longer have any shared values.)

So, what can we do? Design confrontation back in. Develop a mindset that confrontation is good, that we can confront difficult topics and situations and work through them. We can systemically design space for confrontation back into our digital products and, through this process, encourage growth.

SIDENOTE: listening to Steve's session reminded me of this stencil/drawing I made for a color design class a few years ago. It's a critique of an ad for a smart phone, the main copy read: No Boundaries. I didn't work in digital at the time I made this poster assignment for my class, but my sentiments about mindless consumption at the expense of authentic human interaction remains the same today.

"A persons success in life can usually be measured by the number of uncomfortable conversations he or she is willing to have." - Timothy Ferriss

There are three places where Steve suggests we design confrontation into our lives;

1. Colleagues:"Every time we withhold, we're robbing ourselves and our colleagues of opportunities to learn." - SteveSteve thinks we should confront our colleagues. He referenced this Tedx Talk with Amy Edmondson. She studied teams in medical fields and initially saw that better teams (better as in, better numbers/reviews/other quantifiable measures) were making more mistakes. After she dug deeper into this finding, she realized that they weren't necessarily making more mistakes, but they were reporting and confronting their mistakes so they could learn from them. So, on paper, they made more mistakes then other, less successful, teams.

Steve has implemented something he calls Real Talk on his team. He said any team can do it, you just need to create a reoccurring calendar event :) This is a time and space that he has set aside to listen to what his team has to say and encourage respectful confrontation. His pro tip here is to drink less coffee since it heightens anxiety in an already emotionally charged situation. I'm not quite there (I love my coffee too much), but he has a point.

2. Customers: The examples of companies currently confronting their customers;

Wii sports - they've programmed into their product a 'why don't you take a break?' inquiry at specific time intervals. There's an image of an open window with a blue sky and wispy drapes, clearly suggestive of taking a break from digital life for some RL

Netflix - 'Are you still watching?' feature after x amount of episodes

AirBnB - the CEO believes that companies have a responsibility to improve society. They implemented a tolerance clause before you're allowed to make an account. In super-abbreviated summary, their nondiscrimination policy requires users to agree to treat all people with respect.

The Paradox of Tolerance is a philosophical concept defined by Karl Popper in the WWII era. It was presented in the context of customers having push back for a change in policy, such as with AirBnB's tolerance clause. As with all change, there was negative feedback from some users. So, it makes sense to to adopt this sentiment:

A tolerant society must be tolerant

For tolerant societies to exist, we must be intolerant of intolerance.

3. Self:

"The most creative opportunity you have as a designer is to confront yourself and decide how to live your life" - Steve Selzer

Steve did a few bold things to confront and challenge himself:

He deleted his social media apps from his phone (Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat)

He started boxing 4-5 times per week. He has to confront the morning (not a morning person), confront his opponents. He's also built a community around the new sport and the members of his boxing community are confronting him often. Steve acknowledged that athletes are very familiar with confrontation of self (which is very true).

He started making pottery in a ceramics studio. He enjoys how necessarily imperfect so many of the pieces are and he is fully engaged in the process and committed to learning from the failures.

James, the filmmaker-turned-particle-physicist, did a brilliant job of giving us a super high level summary of what CERN does with cool mini-slivers of slightly deeper dives into things (in which he spoke remarkably fast) and then came back to normal-people speak to explain, in simpler terms, what he meant by the tiny-sliver-slightly-deeper dive he just showed us. Realistically, it was still all just surface level, but was new to me.

Here are a few bullet points for easy/fun reading or casual fact-drops with your pals:

CERN has the worlds largest particle accelerator. They call it the Large Haldron Collider (LHC for short

LHC is 27km long and has two beams that make particles travel nearly at the speed of light

They need these particles to travel fast so they can collide at speeds that attempt to replicate what happened when our galaxy was created

The particles are accelerated using very large and very cold magnets (colder than outer space) and vacuums

The LHC takes 3D images at the speed of 40 million times per second

terminology: 1 collision = 1 event, 1 snapshot = 1 record.

A summary of things that I'm pretty sure James told us (hopefully I didn't f*ck this up too much):

the particles in the LHC are protons

Protons are made up of other things, such as quarks and gluons

the quarks and gluons are able to interact in the very particular environment of the LHC

the interaction of those things is what the physicists really want to see

so they collide 2 point blank particles at incredible speeds

The non-intuitive nature of quantum physics (as explained by James Beacham, in story format, loosely summarized here): The particles smack together, and what happens is like this; say you have two cars and they collide. When they hit each other, they disappear, and what's left in their place is one bicycle. And then the bicycle disappears and two skateboards are left. The moment when the bicycle exists is the part in the middle, and that seems to be what these physicists are most interested in.

James also talked about dark matter. Astro physicists know that most things in the universe are missing. All the galaxies seem to be off somehow. Our calculations are always wrong, based on our current laws of physics. So, one of two things must be true; 1. gravity is wrong (highly unlikely), or 2. there must be more stuff that we can't see, as in, this stuff is not illuminated because it doesn't react to light and therefore it's imperceptible.

CERN offers a three month arts residency each year, since 2012. Naturally, it's called COLLIDE. The artist for 2017 was a woman named Laura Couto Rosado. She explained what her experience at CERN was like and how she developed a process. She had a brilliant energy and was clearly very grateful for her experience at CERN and also for the potential of what is happening there. By potential, I mean that on many scales; the potential for humanity, science, curiosity, Laura's personal artistic exploration. There were a few things she said that stuck with me and are quite poetic. She also made some beautiful animations, such as this:

Laura talked about the sculptural nature of so many of the physical pieces that make up the LHC and other parts of machines at CERN. There are so many cables. She said 'The colliders stimulate our imaginary'. She calls the project she's currently working on Quantum Nuggets and describes it as Form Follows Phenomena, which is a call to a common design concept of Form Follows Function.She also acknowledged how powerful the artist residency program is; 3 months of residency gives her 30 YEARS of material to digest and use to drive designs and art in her career. It pushed her to be analytical, establish a structure and constraints, and challenged her to consider how to shape the intangible to a form that is closer to everyday life, closer to everyday people in a way that's pleasing and visually consumable.

The artist residency program also has benefits for the scientists at CERN. James candidly acknowledges that, while the work being done at CERN is incomparably exceptional (it's the largest scientific organization whose work and research is NOT weaponizable), one still gets wrapped up in the monotony of the day-to-day at work. Having artists come in with a totally new perspective and curiosity is refreshing and allows him to remember to look at his work in new ways. It sounds like it's invigorating for the physicists as well.

This concludes my summary of my sessions for day 1. The last session of the day (Decrypting the Universe) was definitely the most mind-blowing and took me the longest to start to actually understand. I love the thing that happens when you hear of something for the VERY FIRST TIME and you're all like "what the hell is going on again". Sort of like the first time someone told you about Bitcoin. That's how I felt in this session when the artist started talking. And then the particle physicist chimed in, and then the back and forth and I was like WHAT JUST HAPPENED. So I couldn't stop thinking about it and I talked to Barb and Abby about it and then I digested my messy sketchbook notes and paired them with some google searches and more reading on the CERN website and now I understand what they told us in the session yesterday, And, as always, science is cool.

I arrived in Austin, Texas yesterday. The temperature was 89 degrees and I started sweating immediately. That's not surprising, though. I'm sort of always sweating.

I'm attending SXSW Interactive Festival. The nature of the trip is two-part.

PART ONE // The initial draw was for our podcast (We Got To Hang Out) of which I am a recently-added cohost. Barb and Abby did all the legwork to get the pod accepted and I get to experience the charming benefits. My badge reads 'We Got To Hang Out Podcast, Speaker'. It's platinum, which basically means I can go to whatever I want, seemingly, as long as I can abide by the following:

arrive to the venue early and stand in line

endure the wondering nature of said line and mind the gap when the movements starts. This is real life.

be lucky enough to be near enough to the front of the line to be permitted access to the ever-filling space

PART TWO // I realized very quickly upon checking out the SXSW website that the Interactive Festival is extremely relevant to my job (job title: User Experience Specialist). So, I'm packing my days full of sessions and presentations about ALL THE THINGS.

As I was scribbling down notes in my sketchbook, my mind overflowing with ideas, I decided I should reactivate this quiet blog with a daily digest of my experience at SXSW. This is largely for myself so I can have a handy digital reference back to things I learned or heard (or want to do deeper dives on) while I'm here. Also, regurgitating my sometimes-incomprehensible notes from my sketchbook while they're FRESH will also help etch the ideas in my memory and person.

We gave swift goodbye hugs as our Lyft driver waited patiently, seemingly unaffected by the markedly less-patient driver stuck behind him while his car entirely blocked the narrow Philadelphia neighborhood street outside the Helm residence. The weather was pleasantly tepid on this late summer evening and my lifebae, Garrett, and I were hitching a ride to the airport.

Today marks the end of another racing trip that is, seemingly, no remarkable than any of the many trips before it. We arrived late the night before our first of two races, slept, woke up, carefully set out all race-day items, placed said items neatly into the race-day bag, picked Tiff up at the airport after her red-eye travel, ate a hearty breakfast, took a rest nap, gathered ourselves, did some reverse calculations for an accurate departure time, made a desperate stop along a too busy road so I could pee in the long grass on the edge, and made it to the race with what seemed like plenty of time.

The racing was good, fast, made my heart feel like exploding (in the oh-fuck-this-is-an-intense-race-effort sense rather than a sentimental sense), as usual. The sun was low, nearly blinding on the backside of the course. It tucked itself away and we finished our crit in the twilight. The very end of the race saw some dangerous solo moves sneak off the front, but the momentum of our field managed to reel them in in the last seconds and Tiff sprinted to a solid 5th place. She’s a baller.

We got some dinner at an aptly named taco spot; “Let’s Taco About It”. The food was good and the company was better. As we slowly drifted out of our racing haze, we realized we had to get home so we could get to bed and wake up for a too early GRAND FINALE race the next morning at 11:45am.

Our Sunday race was also good. We came to secure two year-long competitions; Tiff’s Individual Overall WIN and our Team Overall WIN for the USA Crit Championships. We did both of those things despite a tough race against some fierce teams with hearty numbers. We were stoked to have Becca (superhuman extraordinaire), her parents (so kind and enjoyable), and a whole Helm Clan (the very best) cheering us on for our last hurrah. We definitely missed the rest of our LA SWEAT squad who couldn’t make it for our FINALE for a few different reasons; bruised tailbone, work, cyclocross, grad school, etc. Despite their physical absence, our teammates were omnipresent thanks to our active team text thread and our recently built history together, thoughtfully and pleasantly formed throughout a year of commitment to each other. This year was special and I couldn’t be more content in my decision to let this season be my last.

Me and Tiff on the start line. Photo credit: Garrettino Helm

Bike racing will always hold a special space in my narrative, my mind, and my understanding of the world and my place in it. As with all worthwhile things in life, it’s likely the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I don’t make this claim lightly, and I’ve considered it carefully. It surpasses Architecture school and personal tragedy only because of its unique combination of mental, intellectual, emotional, and physical challenge. All that, and the sheer time in which I entirely dedicated myself to it. It’s an endeavor that feels unique to elite level athletes, but is more likely a widely understood human experience. It seems to me that things like farming, combat, big game hunting, funambulism, etc. send people through a similar sequence of unrelenting mental and physical sensations.

I’ve always been decisive in my practice of doing a candid annual check-in with myself regarding my bike racing career and, remarkably or not, the decision to be done was pretty easily made.

When you’re really fully in a thing, chasing a passion, your focus is necessarily tight, myopic even. You can only see directly in front of you and it has to be this way, for a time, if you hope to get any better than you already are at the thing you’re doing.

Early on, when I decided to see how far I could go in bike racing, it always felt as though I was on a steep scramble, chasing some elusive pinnacle. It felt gritty, it felt relentless, it felt wholly new and fresh. I was learning about my sport and myself and it felt exponential, I was engaged and the process was more appealing than any alternative at the time.

For the sake of sticking with the mountain scramble analogy, I found a viewpoint. Maybe it’s what I could see as the pinnacle in the earlier days, but when I reached it, I saw I’d only made it part way up. I could see the next viewpoint, it looked nice, but it also looked similar to where I stood, maybe a bit cooler and windier. I saw other friends and teammates take off up the next slope with an impressive dedication to their journey. I listened carefully to their stories of what it was like up there, what it took to get there. I loved their stories and my respect for them grew while my personal desire to embark on a similar journey faded. I could see the sacrifice and hardships they endured for their gains. I could understand, with a new clarity that perhaps only time and experience bring, what I would need to do to step off my ever-more-cozy viewpoint and continue up the slope. I wasn’t willing to do it. I couldn’t pause the rest of the things I needed to learn and do and love for bike racing any longer.

So here I am. Flying home, for the last time, from a racing block. I’m not a bike racer anymore. I wouldn’t trade one second of any of it, while, simultaneously, there’s probably nothing that will bring me back.

Before I raced, bikes were my lifestyle. I rode them to school, to the grocery store, to dinner, out to shows. They have always been the way I experience life and the cities where I live. I’ve become much better at them over the last 7 years of racing, and I intend to maximize that indefinitely. I’m looking forward to tons of bike adventures, shredding, casual local singlespeed cyclocross endeavors, and endless commutes on two wheels. I’ll stay involved in the sport I love, but my role as a racer has ended.

Thanks to everyone who supported me over the years. Please know that I noticed and remember all the things you did for me, even the tiniest things, and I am forever grateful to you all. I especially thank those who had a profound impact on my trajectory through the sport, you know who you are.

There’s a lot to think about, read about, understand, disagree and agree with these days. I know you all put the most important things first and that is the best thing to do. Please keep doing that and putting your hard earned dollars where they matter the most to you. If you have any dollars left to spare after that, please consider reading on or clicking here to go directly to our gofundme page.

A few months ago, I was having a chat with my dear friend, Laura Green. We were discussing our mutual affection for mammals and, more specifically, our belief in the beauty and magic of horses. They are huge, they are elegant, they connect with us humans on a level akin to dogs and best friends.

To give this some context, I should mention that much of my youth was dedicated to horses. More specifically, to riding, training, and showing my horses in 4-H and in the local Northern Minnesota circuit all summer long. I loved it and this laid a foundation for what my mom has recently identified as “my desire to go around in ovals and compete”.

For several years, Laura has been connected with her horse, Copper. Laura adopted Copper through a non-profit horse rescue called New Options, where Copper still lives. Laura invited me to visit New Options and meet the horses and Leslie, the woman who runs the show, and I learned more about what they do. My belief in their organization and their grit is what compelled me to partner with Laura to create this campaign in an attempt to raise money for New Options. This is a cause that will pay for itself, and more, within a short amount of time and will help to create more opportunities for both the animals and the people who depend on New Options for life and quality of life.

We’ve created a gofundme page and are trying to raise enough money for a covered riding arena, which will allow the organization to bring in revenue and work with the horses more effectively all year long, despite the wet Pacific Northwest weather. As a token of our gratitude, we have gifts for any amount that you can donate over $25. These gifts are designed and screen printed in Portland, Oregon (mostly by me, with some printing help for particular items).

If you hate giving your credit card information to the internet or just prefer human interaction, you can contact me or Laura directly and work something out. All the info can be found on the gofundme page. Val the Dog thinks you'll like the gift options, some examples below:

The first time I tried almond butter, I was appalled. Maybe I was prejudiced due to it’s price tag, but I think it was more related to the fact that I found it to have a gritty texture and a less-appealing-than-peanut-butter taste. It should be noted that I’ve always quite liked almonds in their whole form, so it wasn’t as though I simply disliked the taste of almonds all together, that would make too much sense.

Through college and beyond, I dated a wonderful guy who had a bad peanut allergy. We tried almond butter, but neither of us liked it enough to continue throwing $20 bills at 16-ounce jars, so I swore off nut butters for many years. In more recent years, during my ever-increasing need for calorie-dense foods, I started putting down jars of peanut butter with extreme casualness.

During the racing season last year, I spent a great deal of time with one of my teammates who had a strong affection for almond butter. I might have spent more time with her than any other person last year, so almond butter became a common food item in my daily life. She also told me that peanut butter isn’t that good for me and another teammate corroborated her attack on my nut butter. I scoffed at the time, but it’d be a damn lie if I said her comments didn’t stick with me, slowly eroding my life-long allegiance to the most reasonably priced nut butter. I held fast my peanut butter buying tendencies until very recently, it fit nicely into my budget and I had a sincere enjoyment for the taste and hunger-suppressing abilities of America’s most common nut butter.

My new-found appreciation for almond butter hit hard and fast. Recounting most recent events, I can see one possible suspect for my absolute addiction: the New Season’s Almond Butter with a hint of Jacobsen Sea Salt. I first laid eyes on this perfect food item about nine weeks ago. Maybe I missed my teammate, Olivia, or maybe I was looking to spice up my daily habits. Whatever it was that lead me to browsing the row of alternative nut butters, I haven’t looked back. I prefer the chunky version, each bite adequately salty with just enough crunch. The almonds bits are the perfect size, the creamy part the perfect texture.

My almond butter addiction has some terrifying commonalities to my coffee addiction. Even though I have about half of a jar left at home, I still had some anxiety when the New Season’s Almond Butter with a hint of Jacobsen Sea Salt shelf space was empty last Saturday on my grocery run. I was going to just pick up another jar or two so that I wouldn’t ever be without it. Much like how I purchase coffee every time I go to the store, even when I have enough at home for at least five days, live a short five-minute walk from the coffee shop, and have an employer who believes in an endless supply of Stumptown Hair Bender. I feel compelled to at least glance at the almond butter shelf and consider whether or not to throw another jar in the cart, just in case.

I had a theory that maybe it wasn’t the fact that it was made of almonds. Maybe it was the addition of Jacobsen Sea Salt to the nut butter that brought me so much delight. Full of optimism, I grabbed a jar of New Season’s Peanut Butter with a hint of Jacobsen Sea Salt and brought it home. After my ride yesterday, I sat down with some toast and both jars of nut butters. My short-lived theory has been debunked, my preference forever altered, almond is my new nut butter and my commitment is fierce.

preamble: It should be know that this blog post is quite tardy, the race took place on March 13th, 2016 and it is now 5 days into April. I started my post the very next day on my way home and just had a small conclusion to write, but apparently procrastination is my new MO. Since I started this post, my dear Lauren (who is the part of this story that makes the most prevalent pronoun 'we') had a bad crash in the road stage at San Dimas Stage Race just three days ago. She is stable and has close friends and family by her side. I wanted to share this story even though I couldn't have LaurenPony proofread for approval (she always approves the things I write anyway). This trip was, perhaps undoubtedly, 'the best trip of my life'. Thanks for reading.

Late last summer I bailed on a scheduled flight from Salt Lake City to Denver. It was one of my classic (calculated) last minute spontaneous decisions that had everything to do with maximizing the experience. It stayed with me and became a sort of foreshadowing in my own personal narrative (and that of my team(s)).

SIDENOTE: I should mention that I spent several minutes pondering the overall effect of my potentially selfish decision on my team (who pays my travel). I checked the ticket, they paid $99 for the trip and it would cost them another $75 more in bike fees if I took the flight, it would cost exactly $0 (and spare my legs another trip through the air) if I jumped in a heavily decaled sporty car instead. So I did the only thing I could really do and and took the ride with a young woman I'd briefly spoken with (once) a couple days earlier.

I could tell we were going to get along from our previous brief interaction and the seemingly similar (culturally) teams we each came from. She has good energy and a knack for instigating music video creations on road trips (I was to soon learn). We talked a lot. When we weren't talking, we were singing along terribly to music. Some of our conversation was about bike racing, more was on the subject of love and misadventures in romance, all of it was good.

Fast forward to a few short months ago when our teams decided to merge to create a superteam. I'm hellastoked to be a part of this new group founded by two well grown women's cycling programs, Visit Dallas DNA Pro Cycling. I am honored to embark on another year of bike adventure heavily focused on criterium racing with appropriate sprinkles of stage races and gravel jams. As I get deep into my winter bike riding games, I feel a growing excitement for meeting up with my teammates (old and new) and getting after that glory and beauty we all keep chasing in this sport.

eff yeah bikes.

p.s. I should mention the lady subject of most of this post is the one and only Lauren De Crescenzo. If you don't know her now, you surely will soon.

There’s a familiar olfactory experience that brings me back to my days of roaming shoe-less and free upon the rural Midwestern landscape of my childhood. I was jettisoned back there a couple weeks ago as soon as my paved route turned gravel and the humid farmland foliage extended as far as I could see and filled my nose with all the smells of times past.

I found myself in a glorious, yet potentially embarrassing, situation all of the sudden. I was in the Tour of Flanders and I made the breakaway. It’s a great place to be, a real opportunity to perform on one of the most spectacular and prestigious arenas in cycling.

The first question I was asked this morning by the customs officer as I was entering Canada was where I was coming from. Maybe I got an unexpected wave of nerves since I'd stuffed a clove of garlic into my pack and just remembered it and realized I hadn't claimed it on my customs form, or maybe I've just been to a lot of places lately. Either way, I had to think for some long hard moments before I could answer truthfully, I was coming from Winston-Salem, in the great state of North Carolina. The officer didn't seem too phased by my apparent ineptitude once he realized I was in the same party as the woman directly ahead of me in the customs line, my teammate, who also couldn't recall where she was coming from.

I vacillate between feeling I've got it figured out and realizing it's better that I'm mostly winging it. Nothing is permanent (except for maybe tattoos, or at least as permanent as it would ever matter for anything to be) (there has to be a better way to say what I just said about tattoos).